1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for analyzing a branching structure of a panicle.
2. Description of the Related Art
A technique called QTL (Quantitative Trait Locus) analysis is adopted in plant breeding of plants including crops such as rice. In the QTL analysis, a useful property such as plant morphology is digitized and compared to a genetic type, and thereby estimating where in a chromosome a gene involved in the property is located. For example, properties such as rice panicle morphology, the number of seed grains, and heading dates are used as parameters in the rice QTL analysis.
However, because the rice panicle morphology is complicated, conventionally manual measurement was required for digitizing the rice panicle morphology as the parameters. Specifically, one panicle is manually spread to measure the number of branches, a branching state of the branches, a length of the branches, the number of the seed grains, and “fertility” and “sterility” of the seed grains. A long time and skilled work were required to perform the manual work.
Recently there has been developed an apparatus that measures and selects a shape of the seed grain (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2002-312762 and 2005-55245). However, unlike the seed grain, the rice panicle has a stereoscopic, complicated structure. Although X-ray CT (Computed Tomography) or MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is also used as the method for analyzing the stereoscopic structure, the apparatus is large and an amount of processed data becomes huge and therefore the apparatus is not for general purpose use. Thus, the general-purpose analysis method and analysis apparatus for analyzing the structure of the panicle, such as the rice panicle, which includes a branching state of the branches, have not been developed yet.
Accordingly, there is a need for the general-purpose analysis method and analysis apparatus for analyzing the panicle morphology of the branching structure of the panicle such as the rice panicle.